Speak to Persuade, or "Influence"?

The secret to becoming an “Instant Public Speaker” is simply to add “you” in your presentations; your likes, dislikes, interests, stories, etc. This make you relatable. Some of your speeches will be informational but more and more, much of our speeches are entirely or in part having to do with persuasion. Also off the podium we communicate to influence; face to face and with social media. But are we getting the “influence” we want?

John Corcoran shares real practical ways to “influence the influencers” in this article.

Hi, I’m John Corcoran, I’m a former White House Writer, attorney-entrepreneur, and contributor for Forbes, Entrepreneur and Business Insider.

Let me ask you a couple of questions.

·         Do you HATE going to boring networking events?

·         Do you struggle to attract clients and grow your revenues – and at the same time, struggle to build relationships with the higher-level VIPs and Influencers in your industry?

·         Do you ever feel like everyone else has high level VIP connections in your field (connections that help them get ahead) while you don’t?

I know how to build relationships with the right people.

After my father got laid off when I was 13 years old, it lit a fire under me. It inspired me to study successful people to figure out what made them “tick.”

During my teenage years, I devoured biographies and autobiographies… about Presidents… Actors… Athletes… Market-leading Entrepreneurs.

What I found was that successful people – particularly seasoned entrepreneurs – all did a great job of (a) identifying who were the influencers in their field who they should build relationships with, and (2) going out and building those relationships.

They ALL knew how to identify with precision WHO they needed to develop relationships with, and then they followed through on it.

Those relationships were always a big factor in each of their successes.

So I applied that to my life. I started focusing in on building key relationships with the right influencers and VIPs who could help me land amazing opportunities.

And by my late teens, I started seeing huge results.

After I spent a semester during college as a White House intern in the speechwriting office, I returned to college with my sights set on coming back as a writer. Even though the White House takes thousands of interns per year, few of those interns end up getting hired.

But I knew who my influencers were: the speechwriters.

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